Re: Arch vs. Debian

teehee, ok, i'll play along. it will at least keep the thread diverse. hehe.

i respect both arch and debian, but i've never actually managed to stick with either long enough to get an acceptably functioning machine out of it. now i'm not saying that's the fault of arch or debian, nor am i saying it's my fault ... (ok, yeah, it's probably my ineptitude) but what it does show is there isnt the same leg-up offered to noobs as is found in some other distros which have become so utterly low bar, that one can blindly walk in and not even notice there was ever a bar to get over there in the first place. so i've distro surfed alot, usually rather fast and shallow investigations of each, and usually only at peculiar intervals. a beta here, and an alpha there, and full release here and a minor release there. so in the land of the plenty i've rarely given a distro a long time. only the ones who sucker me in with just a hint of candy... like sabayon, slitaz, slax and crunchbang... have any chance of keeping me there long enough. with the hurdle of having to actually know names and words and numbers and stuff to get your hardware working... pah, thats so last millenium. arch hadnt a chance. debian hadnt a chance. ...or hadnt they?

i still have at least one arch virtualbox. i still have the debian windows installer half complete on my laptop.

this thread has been a great insight into both. debian especially i think, as the less loyalty/homeground influenced, it recieves the uninhibited critiques.

i do admire a sensible duration of release cycle though. why be the rabbit n get caught on your own feet. dont bite off more than u can chew. if you recall back in the day, how long were you using an operating system for? i remember sticking with win 98 for probably almost 5 years, and had win95 for at least a couple years prior to that, and it's pretty much the same, even on the glimmours of winxp that i used, i still just made it like the win98 i had prior as much i could. and in the 5 + years of using linux, i've gotten smarter, diversified, been more flexible, open, selective, and even at times excessively gluttenous with the software i browsed, but still... i'm looking for the system that best gives me the system i want, and that includes it having the ability to teach me my system too. for this, in my experiences so far, the best are slackware, and sabayon and crunchbang getting honourable mentions. and thats just out of my experience, hardly definitive given how many thousands more distros there out there beyond the mere hundreds i've tried. we can each easily shimmy into place to find our most expedient learning. whats right for one might not be right for another. heh, someone might actually wanna be an ignorant ignoramus stay noob forever, some might not want to offer up front concise documentation in the interface and keep a % of users in the dark, some might want to close all developement ideas in onto only an elite inner circle of coders, some might want to make secret code that does their bidding so they can construct a magalythic software empire~.. so you see we can't cater to everyone. but i'm sorry to say, i think we're long past the time when any geek ever need shout at anyone to look at the manual. if we stuck at that approach we'd be screaming it from now until the end of history and beyond. despite improvements, there will still always be people who will fail to look up the manual. i say, get two birds stoned with one hit. put the manual in the software. end of argument. no more frustrated geeks, no more ignoramuses who miss how to operate the software. is that happening yet? again, surprisingly, great strides have been made, and do again keep cropping up in various places. it surprises me because progress here, as i previously wrote, has been advancing from the other end too. less ignoramuses not reading manuals, and more manuals being embedded into the interface... hrmm... could there be a connection?the light is going off in the head of the smaaaaall psychologist in my head... she wants to proclaim that by stimulating learning, fascination, wonder and appreciation for shared creativity and secrets and pragmatic boons, the user then wants more, and will actually be more inclined to look up more about how to operate their software. how about that for a theory huh?'n' i'm not talking about clumsy nuisances that pop up in your way to tell you how to use it but wont let you use it until you click to get rid of the thing telling you how ot use it.... i'm talking about tool tips, and even elaborative tooltips, that expand and tell you more the longer you hover over it. i'm talking about, yes, even those explanations and blurbage like you see on arch's install. though, as memory serves, i still like slackware's better. hehe.

anyways, i'm gonna cut the rest of my long storys short, and lay out my noobile opinion. (yeah, still a noob after 5 years with linuxes... thats what i get for all my years wasted with suse and other nooby plastic wrap distros)

arch wins over debian.

thought i was leanin the other way didnt yas.

debian does have alot going for it on paper......... but in experience, i still think i much prefer arch, for all i'll be using. though idk... debian might make the better choice if i were to knock symbian off my phone. but as the op is about a second main midoodjer desktopper...

+1 arch

fave quote of the mo': "Man's reach should exceed his grasp, else what's a heaven for." - Robert Browning